


the line

by writerforlife



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-30
Updated: 2018-07-30
Packaged: 2019-06-18 12:56:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15486243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writerforlife/pseuds/writerforlife
Summary: "The line doesn’t always have to be between us.” Bucky grabs Steve’s hand and pulls him onto the same side of the line as him. “There. If bullies pick on me, it’s fine, but if they mess with you, that’s the line.” Bucky puffs his chest out. “They’re gonna have to deal with both of us.”"Steve, Bucky, and the line spanning their entire relationship





	the line

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted an excuse to A) write Steve/Bucky and B) explore the quote that breaks my heart every time (that being "I'm with you 'til the end of the line", of course). Hope everyone enjoys!

When Steve Rogers is seven years old, all knobby knees and doe eyes too big for his skinny face, Bucky Barnes takes a stick and draws a line between them in the half-melted snow. 

“When you’re friends with someone, you gotta have a line,” Bucky proclaims. 

“A line?” Steve echoes. He just wants Bucky to keep talking. He’s never known someone so confident in every word they say—not even his ma has that quality.

“Yeah. A breaking point. Like, Ma can call me  _ sweetheart _ , but that’s the limit. She can’t call me any other nicknames, or I’ll get mad.”

“So you can tease me about not being able to run fast, but not about my height?” Steve asks, stifling a cough brought on by the winter chill. 

“Exactly. And the line doesn’t always have to be between us.” Bucky grabs Steve’s hand and pulls him onto the same side as him. “There. If bullies pick on me, it’s fine, but if they mess with you, that’s the line.” Bucky puffs his chest out. “They’re gonna have to deal with both of us.”

Steve studies the line, which is already falling victim to the dirt under the snow. He doesn’t really like the idea of bullies picking on Bucky, but he thinks Bucky just said it to be nice. Nobody messed with Bucky. They all came for Steve. “I like it.”

 

#

 

Bucky takes to saying  _ he crossed a line _ before jumping into a fight when he’s eleven years old. Steve’s ma calls Bucky  _ scrappy _ (the teachers opt for  _ a troublemaker _ ), but Steve thinks he’s brave. 

Steve faces two older boys in an alleyway. They’d been messing with a girl. Sure, she was a looker and her short was a little short, but Hell, she deserved to wear what she wanted without some creeps commenting on it. They crowd him, jeering and taunting him even as he raises his fists. He knows they’re about to beat the shit out of him, but all he can think is  _ Where in God’s name is Bucky?  _

“You’ve crossed a line, pals.” 

Steve grins and kicks one of them in the crotch. He howls and lunges for Steve, but Bucky—considerably taller than when he was seven—yanks him back and serves him with a solid right hook, then sends the other man on his way with a glare. Steve attributes his pounding heart to the adrenaline of the fight. 

“You don’t always have to do that,” Steve says. 

“Of course I do.” Bucky slings an arm around his shoulder, a grin playing across his face. “Who would I be to ignore the line?”

 

#

 

They sit on a rooftop together when they’re sixteen, sipping Cokes that Bucky bought. In the setting sun, the summer heat isn’t so bad. Bucky’s cheeks are flushed, his sweat hair pushed back from his forehead, shirt off to reveal new, ropy muscles cording through his chest and arms. Steve can’t stop himself from looking, from wondering how it would feel to press his hand to Bucky’s toned stomach. He remembers that a few weeks ago, Bucky jerked him off, said he was helping out.  _ What’s it matter between friends?  _ he’d said. 

Steve couldn’t stop thinking about Bucky’s  _ hands _ . 

“You know what I think sounds good?” Bucky slurps his Coke noisily, lips red from toying with the straw. “‘Til the end of the line. What do you think?”

“What does it mean?” Steve has an idea. He wants to hear Bucky say it.

“Well, I figure you and me are going to be together for awhile. I want you to know I’m going to be here until the end of it. We’re both so worked up over our line. Why not put it to use? It sounds nice, doesn’t it?”

Steve can’t stop himself. He kisses Bucky quickly, but before he can pull away, Bucky makes an  _ obscene  _ sound and deepens it. 

“Jesus, Steve,” Bucky mutters once he pulls away.

“I’m sorry.” Steve flushes red. “I know there’s a line between—”

Bucky interlaces their fingers. His hands are still cold from holding the Coke bottle. Steve thinks he’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. “Fuck the line and kiss me again.”

 

#

 

“I’m with you,” Bucky whispers when they’re seventeen. The couch cushions are on the floor. They’re laying on them. It’s the middle of the night. Probably early morning. Sarah Rogers is dead. “I meant it when I said it, Stevie. I’m with you ‘til the end of the line. Longer, if you want.”

Steve doesn’t have anymore tears to cry. He leans his head into the crook of Bucky’s neck. 

 

#

 

When Steve was sick, the line was stealing. No matter how bad it got, Bucky never took anything they couldn’t pay for. He borrowed, he worked, he scrounged, but never stole. 

“The line,” Steve manages to choke out. He’s nineteen, an orphan, and so sick he thinks Death himself is setting up camp at their door. “Remember?”

“Not the end of the line yet, Stevie.” Bucky piles yet another blanket on him. Steve still trembles. He’s fucking  _ cold.  _ His chest hurts. His throat is burning. He can’t sit up without vomiting. Bucky sits on the bed, eyes troubled.

“I’m just saying not to do anything stupid.”

“You know me. I’m the smartest fella you’ll ever know.” Bucky grins, but there are tears in his eyes. Steve wants to ask him to hold him. There would be worse ways to go then under blankets and in Bucky Barnes’s arms. 

He can’t be so selfish to put that on Bucky.

“I need to go out,” Bucky says. 

Steve tries to glare at him. They have no money. Nobody left to borrow from. 

He kisses his forehead. “Sleep, Stevie.”

When the door shuts, Steve tries not to sleep, but he’s so  _ comfortable _ . Warm. Vaguely—it could be hours later—he thinks he hears someone screaming. Cherry-flavored liquid stings his tongue. He tries to spit it out, but someone clamps his jaw shut. He hears murmuring. Footsteps, back and forth. Sobbing. Someone’s crying their damn eyes out.  _ That can’t be Bucky,  _ he thinks. He can’t open his eyes to do anything about it. 

He opens his eyes. 

Bucky Barnes sits next to him, unshaven and wearing wrinkled clothes, an empty medicine bottle on the table next to them. His eyes are red, but when he sees Steve, a smile stretched across his chapped lips.

“Thought there was a line,” Steve says. “No stealing.”

Bucky shrugs. “Lines can move, Stevie. My only moral principle is you.”

 

#

  
  
  


#

Bucky doesn’t say much after Steve rescues him and the rest of the 107th. He looks at Steve once after they reach safety, and shakes his head. He marches without word. He shies doctors by batting his lashes. He grins, nurses a single drink, and jokes with the other men, but a light in his eyes is missing.

When the booze starts to run low, Steve quietly grabs a medical kit and steers Bucky into his private tent. Bucky glares at him. He knows why bullies ran away.

“Take it off,” Steve orders.

Bucky tries to grin. “There are nicer ways to get me out of my pants.”

“I’m serious, Buck.”

Silence stretches between them. Steve thinks he’s going to have to wrestle Bucky out of his clothes and treat him by force, but Bucky suddenly exhales. Not meeting Steve’s eyes, he eases his shirt off. Steve stifles an inhale. Angry cigarette burns, bruises, and needle marks freckle his arms and chest. With his head still bowed, Bucky removes his pants. There are more cigarette burns on his thighs, below his underwear, cuts on his calves, and a smattering of bruising against his right hip. 

“I didn’t want you to see,” Bucky whispers. “I wanted you to think I was strong. Like you are, apparently.” Bucky makes a helpless gesture at Steve’s new body. 

“Buck—” Steve gasps. 

“There was a line,” Bucky whispers. “I went, you stayed. You not getting yourself wrapped up in this was the fucking line. We agreed on that. There has always been a goddamned line, Steve.”

“Buck,” Steve says. “You know we always have to be on the same side.”

Bucky starts to cry. 

He cries while Steve cleans his wounds, cries while he recounts everything they did to him in painstaking detail. They end up making love—Bucky’s rough at first, and Steve thinks it’s to prove he can still be strong, but the second time, he moves tenderly. Steve kisses the burns and bruises, wishing he could turn back time and save him.  

“I’m so fucking selfish,” Bucky murmurs. “I’m so happy you’re here.”

 

#

 

Bucky falls. 

_ We were supposed to be together _ , Steve thinks. 

Steve puts the Valkyrie in the water.

_ This,  _ he thinks,  _ is the end of the line.  _

He doesn’t know how to feel when he wakes up seventy years later. 

  
  


#

 

When Steve returns back to home from a run—home as in the fucking  _ Stark Tower _ —he finds Tony in his bedroom, looking through his closet. 

Tony puts up his hand. “Before you can get mad, can I say you’ve been wearing the  _ same shirt _ for a week? I wanted to see if this was a thing we needed to address or if you just don’t own any other shirts.”

It shouldn’t bother him. Tony Stark’s worse than the nosy housewives who clucked at him and Bucky when they went out without any girls present. He’s been living at the tower since the battle in New York, so he knows. He shouldn’t be upset. 

“Steve, can you say—”

“Damn it, Tony, there has to be a  _ line _ !”

Steve doesn’t realize what he says until a moment after. 

Of course he would say it today.

It’s the anniversary of Bucky’s death. 

“There has to be a line,” he repeats. He doesn’t know how many times he says it.

“Cap, is this about something besides the shirts?” Tony asks. 

“He’s still dead.” Steve runs both hands through his hair. God, is he doing this  _ now _ ? In front of Stark? “I did all I could do, and he’s still fucking dead, Tony. I can help everyone else in the world, but I’ll still have failed him.”

He expects Tony to laugh, to say something cavalier. At least then he’d have an excuse to punch him. “Dad usually mentioned Sergeant Barnes when he talked about you. Peggy, too,” Tony says instead. Sadness flits across his face. “I’m sorry he died.”

Steve doesn’t know what to say. 

“If you want to be alone, I’ll understand. But I’m going to pop some popcorn, the healthy shit that you like, and put a movie on. Come downstairs if you want to.”

“Thank you,” Steve murmurs.

He thinks about staying alone. 

Bucky would want him to watch the damn movie, so he goes.

 

#

 

Steve thought he knew what heartbreak was. It was watching Bucky take off his clothes to reveal a myriad of injuries; it was the inches between their hands as Bucky fell off the train. 

It was seeing Bucky—quite alive—wearing a mask and pointing a gun at him. 

“I’m with you ‘til the end of the line,” Steve murmurs before the Winter Soldier— _ Bucky _ , his Bucky—throws him off the helicarrier. 

Steve lives. He knows Bucky saved him.

“Apparently the line was letting me drown,” he jokes to Sam. He knows all about the line. Enough Asgardian liquor can make him drunk, and last time he indulged, he told Sam his entire life story, Bucky and all. 

Sam, thank goodness, laughs. “I’d hate to see the other side of that line.”

 

#

 

Steve eats when he needs to eat. Sleeps when he needs to sleep. Fight when he needs to fight. He thinks something in him is broken. Maybe’s he’s been like this since Bucky fell from the train, or maybe since he woke up in a new century, but he doesn’t know how to repair it. 

He fights the Accords.

He fights in the airport in Germany.

He fights Tony when Tony snaps, trying to protect Bucky. 

When they end up on a jet headed for Wakanda, Tony left in Siberia, he stops. Deposits Bucky on a bench near the back of the plane. 

Tries to breathe. 

“What was the line?” Bucky murmurs. He studies the stray wires, all that’s left of his arm, but glances at Steve every few seconds. “Would you have killed him?”

“The line was you.” Steve kneels in front of Bucky. He’s bleeding, exhausted, and a criminal, but his heart hasn’t felt so full in years. “If he’d killed you, he’d be dead.”

Bucky blinks wearily. “You don’t mean that.”

Steve exhales, suddenly exhausted. “No. I couldn’t have killed Stark.”

“Good.” Bucky shakes his head bitterly. “At least one of us needs to be more than a machine. I thought they’d destroyed all of you. If you’d killed him, I would’ve known that  _ my  _ Steve was gone.” He chokes back a sob. “I’m so glad you didn’t kill him, Stevie.”

Steve falls more than sits next to Bucky. Slowly, he takes Bucky’s flesh hand and rubs his thumb over the back. 

Bucky lets him. 

 

#

 

T’Challa calls Steve as soon as Bucky’s out of cryofreeze. Steve rushes back to Wakanda, consequences be damned, and when he goes into the lab, Bucky’s waiting for him. His long hair is combed and tied into a messy bun. His skin is a healthy pink, his beard is groomed, his nails are trimmed, his clothes are clean. 

He’s smiling. 

“Hey, Stevie,” he whispers. 

Steve is undone. 

That night, they stand in Bucky’s bedroom in the palace, a spacious room with an exterior balcony and sweeping sheer curtains that lets the sunset it. Steve sits on the luxurious bed, watching Bucky. He’s standing shirtless on the balcony, hands braced on the railing. Orange and pink light soak his skin and loose hair, rendering him softer than Steve has ever seen. More than anything, he wishes for a watercolor set. Moments like these don’t roll around every day, and he knows better than to take them for granted. 

“Steve.” Bucky’s in front of him. He’s drawn the curtains, leaving only a warm haze. 

Steve’s heart pounds as Bucky sits next to him, leaving only inches between them. Bucky looks at his lap, hands clasped and hair falling into his eyes. 

“I remembered something,” Bucky whispers.

“What is it?” Steve asks. 

“You have to tell me if it’s okay. I need to know you want it.” 

Bucky brings his right hand to Steve’s cheek, then kisses him softly. 

Steve can’t help the whimper that escapes. Bucky recoils, but Steve holds him in place. 

“God, Buck,” he murmurs. “I didn’t think you remembered.”

“You stupid punk. How could I forget?” Bucky pushes Steve back onto the mattress and settles on top of him before kissing him again. When he pulls back, he’s breathless. “They took so much from me, Steve. They tried to take you. They tried, and they tried, and they tried, but they could never take you.” 

What could Steve say in response? That he laid in bed the night after Bucky fell and heard him scream over and over? That his last thought before he put the Valkyrie down was that the water was as blue as Bucky’s eyes? That whenever Stark made jokes, he went to turn to Bucky before realizing he wasn’t there? That he would’ve made whatever sacrifice needed to save Bucky? 

“What’s the line?” he whispers instead. 

“We’re on the same side tonight,” Bucky murmurs. “Fuck the rest of the world. Tonight’s about us.”

Bucky trails his lips down Steve’s neck, his chest, his thighs. He’s forgotten how  _ good  _ this feels. How good Bucky feels. “There’s only ever been you.” Steve exhales and threads his hands through Bucky’s hair, pulling their bodies closer.  “Only you.”

 

#

 

After Thanos is gone, after Bucky and everyone else is back, there are still problems. Steve wouldn’t expect anything different. There are still groups loyal to Thanos that have to be cleaned up. Steve and Bucky tackle one together in Wakanda without backup, which, in hindsight, was really fucking stupid. Steve’s too old to be so naive.

Of course there would be more aliens than they expected. 

Some of them knock Bucky down. He doesn’t get up. 

Steve doesn’t remember much more of the fight. His vision blurs, and the next thing he knows, there’s blood on his shield and alien corpses around him. 

“That reminds me of our glory days.” Bucky groans as he sits up, a bruise already blossoming on his temple. “Except I was the one doing the ass-kicking.” He takes in the carnage. “This is a line you don’t usually cross.”

 

“They  _ hurt  _ you. The line is losing you again,” Steve says, pulling Bucky to his feet. “We might as well call it a closed border with an electrical fence. Not again, Buck. Never. I don’t care if I’m in danger. Don’t risk your life.”

“What did I say? If bullies pick on you, they pick on me, too.” Bucky wipes the blood from Steve’s lip with his thumb. “We aren’t near the end of the line, Stevie. Nowhere close. Trust me on that?”

Steve takes Bucky’s hand as they walk away from the fight. “I’ll trust you on anything.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I'd love to hear any thoughts, and if you want to chat more, my tumblr is such_geekiness :)


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